Interlude (Or How even Angels turn to dust )









What is the purpose of our lives, asked an angel to the Lord. Being an angel, it asked this question out of absolute innocence. It had seen it scratched in the white marble steps on the Lord's throne, minute letters made by what seemed to be an awl or a tooth. The Lord gathered the angel, the angel's wings and its feet into his lap. The warmth and depth of the Lord pervaded the angel and it fell fast asleep.

The angel dreamt that the Lord took his head in both his hands, fastened his wings, and, cradling it, said,"That you may feel the futility of my own existence."

The angel, on hearing this, began to weep and since pain is deadly in the kingdom of eternal joy, it turned into dust. The Lord's infinitely silken lap was covered with this dust and he made no attempt to shake it off. This dust was the angel that our Lord had loved the most and so it clung to him, burning, burrowing holes in the skin of the Lord until his belly and chest were chiggered, pockmarked: anguished, he cried aloud for the dust to depart from his flesh.

The spirit itself was extinguished; the name was erased from the book of life and its utterance banned throughout the kingdom.

The dust drifted downwards; God crushed it in his fist. In the middle of his palm, lay the form of a man, deformed in all eyes but one. A creature to whom nightmares were sustenance, whose strength was despair. The Lord blew his own mortality into this form and cast it out. During the day, it clung to objects. But each night, the creature dreamt of the Lord's death, [blasphemy], and our deaths[hope]. In all this, it was dark; the Lord had left him.

The creature would stand by the gates of life, unable to enter:

Why have you forsaken us? What have you done? My lord, we are blind and helpless, foolish, and yet you have abandoned us.
The Lord so loved this world that he sent his only son to us, briefly. Indifference is greater than love. The dark comes after the light. But first the light dies.


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